I’m sitting here on the couch, fidgeting with my bony fingers, pretending to do something productive even though I know no one can see me anyway. Alone in the small, quiet house, nothing really matters anymore to me. At least, not right now. The fact that there’s a layer of dust on the coffee table, naw, that doesn’t matter. The fridge is empty. Who needs to eat? I need to do laundry. Who even cares anymore? Certainly not me. The blinds are closed over the filthy windows, leaving me in the dark, growing mold where the damp meets the darkness and the stench, the poison doesn’t even phase me. Self-destruction has gotten. so. boring.

Killing yourself is only fun when you’ve got someone to do it with. But when your partner-in-crime leaves you behind because they took the easy way out, you find that living’s not very exciting anymore. Joseph decided he was going to end it early, that this elaborate plan he and I created was stupid. He figured that death wasn’t supposed to be planned this methodically, and threw himself off of his mother’s apartment’s balcony when he went for a visit.

Of course he didn’t die. He was so stupid to think that jumping off a second-story-balcony would kill him. Joseph landed in the hospital with three broken ribs and a shattered ankle requiring surgery. I haven’t visited him once, heaven knows what they would have done when they saw me.
A feeding tube down the throat, maybe. Six different IVs and twice the amount of medications. If the nurses were feeling particularly spiteful, they might slam me into the mental section, where I’d be stuck with all of the crazies.

But since I knew this, I didn’t even bother to call. I checked my messages that day, and promptly ignored his mother’s plea that I come to see him. I also ignored the demanding message from my father when he asked me to show my face at my sister’s wedding. I tried to forget the one from my sobbing younger sister, begging me to come. I got about three feet out of the door before I decided I needed some more Ativan before I was quite equipped to deal with the traffic and the sunlight and the goddamned flower girls. After taking more than the recommended dose, I promptly fell asleep.

Basically, that should have clued my family in to the fact that I was obviously not mentally stable. Yeah, yeah, I said it. I’m not going to be in denial here, I know I’m pretty much one of the bigger basket cases this side of the valley. Although that homeless man who continually stands outside of the McDonald’s across the street is a bit more psychotic than myself. I don’t yell at strangers, I just invite myself into their homes to clean out their drug supply.

Maybe that’s how this whole thing started, I’m not too sure. It’s possible that the amount of Lexapro that I’ve taken has affected my memory. Joseph and I were involved in the drug running business. We didn’t deal in anything illegal, only pills. The manner we got our drugs, however, was much more illegal. Joseph worked at a pharmacy and stole outdated and almost expired medications from the bio hazard bin they were put it. Another trick of his was that once a patient died, it usually took at least two weeks before their prescriptions were cancelled. He would snag the drugs and come home with his pockets loaded with Vicodin, Cymbalta, and whatever else he could find.

I would do things with less stealth. Open Houses were my calling. When the prime piece of real estate was swarming with agents and possible buyers, I’d sneak into the bathrooms, scouting for anything I could steal without getting noticed. It wasn’t really that hard and I became pretty good at holding a half-empty pill bottle without making the telltale rattling sound that would give me away instantly.
Like I said, this may have lead to our demise. There was this night when we had no business and a whole lot of Prozac set on expiring in the next few years. From what I remember, there was no real rush to get rid of it, I mean, we could of waited to fucking sell it. Joseph took the first one, I took the second one, and so on and so forth. I remember laying on his stomach, talking about how shitty the world was and he spoke, in this incredibly stoned sounding voice, “Why don’t we leave it, then?” That was the night we wrote down our plan, using up almost half a notebook with fuck-ups, then coming to the final draft. After we finished it, I passed out, still using his almost non-existent stomach as a pillow.

It only took two weeks before Joseph lost his job at the pharmacy. Three days after that, I stopped going to Open Houses. And by the next Tuesday, we had stopped selling. Joseph and I kept everything for ourselves, and we kept ourselves as high as possible as much as possible. It didn’t really concern us that we had no money anymore for food, for water, for electricity. I can’t really say we were happy, but the sex was the best after we were coming down off of Zoloft.

Then, we ran into some problems. Joseph wasn’t sticking to the plan. He got a job and stopped staying up all night, coming up with clever collages of different colored pills. He started buying oranges and apples and other more interesting fruits. He started complaining that I was too bony, too pale, and he didn’t like the way the bruises stood out on my skin. Joseph said that he didn’t like being reminded that he had put them there, back when he was an “addict”.

The final straw was when he tried to throw out my pills. I screamed at him and slapped him across the face, forgetting that he was the one who was eating and had muscle mass and could open a jar of tomato sauce without smashing it over the counter. Needless to say, he had me pinned against the wall pretty fast, his hands almost crushing my wrists where he held them together. I spit in his face and hissed at him. I told him to get out, to leave. And he was so angry that he did.

He came back that night when I was trying to fall asleep. Joseph slid into bed next to me and let me cry into his tee shirt about how sorry I was that I yelled at him and how I had been trying to fall asleep for the past three hours and how I was freaking out because I couldn’t find my goddamn Ambien. He put his arms around me and I still couldn’t fall asleep.

It was after a week of Joseph putting up with my pills before he started drinking. Occasionally, I’d steal some vodka from him, and occasionally, he’d jack something of mine. He kept pushing me to eat though, and that bugged the shit out of me. Joseph also didn’t like the idea of staying in the apartment forever, and left to visit his mom on her birthday. He had drunk a little too much J.D. before going over there and boom. He fell off her balcony.

And I swear, I have a perfectly logical reason for not visiting him. My goldfish Betty died and I was a mess. I had had her for like, three years and she died on me. I couldn’t bear to flush her so I just left her and continued on with the Luminal injections and the Lunesta pills.

I guess that kinda brings us up to today. I don’t really have an ending to my monologue, but all I know is that I’ve run out of pills. I’ve run out of needles. I’ve run out of alcohol, for god’s sake. And I’m realizing that maybe, maybe my sister was right when she called me and said, “He’s not worth dying over, Aaron.” But I don’t know because if anyone’s worth dying over, it’s Joseph. And he’s in the hospital and oh my god, I haven’t even visited him because I can’t leave the apartment because then I would violate the rules of the plan and I need my Ativan so badly but I don’t have any and...what the hell is that?

My front door just caved in, a strong looking team of policemen stood in the doorway followed by my sister and my frightening landlady. My sister screamed at the sight of me and ran over, cupping my thin face in her hands. She started crying, and I guess I did too, because all of a sudden my cheeks were wet and my vision was blurring and I hadn’t cried since Betty died and it felt so good. The police brought a stretcher into the room and my sister grabbed my hand, squeezing it. I winced, it hurt. The white cot-on-wheels was pushed towards me, and with the last of my failing strength, I tried to scoot myself away from it. But no. She had me by the hand and told me to be good for once.

They lifted me up and strapped me down and I screamed. The straps felt like they were cutting into my soul and I was leaving the apartment. I wasn’t dead yet and I was leaving. I was violating the rules of the plan and it never felt so good.

I guess I was glad to still be alive. The hospital ended up putting me in a private room because I refused to eat in front of strangers and they ended up putting me on morphine for something. I can’t remember what. My sister visits every day, and sometimes, Joseph hobbles over on the crutches he’s going to have to use for the rest of his life. I’m not even close to being out of here, I’m so underweight. After that’s taken care of, I have to go to counseling for my drug abuse and then I’m going to have to move in with my sister who has already said that I can’t get a fish because there’s no room.

Living seems so much more of a hassle than dying. I don’t think anybody’ll miss me anyways. Joseph might, for the next few days before he “slips” on his crutches and breaks his neck. My sister won’t. Her husband hates me and she just wants to make him happy. So maybe if I put a little air in my IV or maybe if I sabotage my feeding tube I can escape this hell a little quicker and flee to the next one.

Maybe I’ll do it, maybe I won’t.
Maybe I’ll ask Joseph about it.

I’d ask Betty, but she’s dead.
She wasn’t that great at giving advice anyways.
She always mumbled.

Joseph once told me that you can be insane without using drugs or anything and I didn’t believe him.

Now, I guess I kinda do.